The following relates generally to wireless communication, and more specifically to cell selection procedure for machine type communication (MTC) devices.
Wireless communications systems are widely deployed to provide various types of communication content such as voice, video, packet data, messaging, broadcast, and so on. These systems may be capable of supporting communication with multiple users by sharing the available system resources (e.g., time, frequency, and power). Examples of such multiple-access systems include code division multiple access (CDMA) systems, time division multiple access (TDMA) systems, frequency division multiple access (FDMA) systems, and orthogonal frequency division multiple access (OFDMA) systems, (e.g., a Long Term Evolution (LTE) system). A wireless multiple-access communications system may include a number of base stations, each simultaneously supporting communication for multiple communication devices, which may be otherwise known as user equipment (UE).
Some types of wireless devices may provide for automated communication. Automated wireless devices may include those implementing Machine-to-Machine (M2M) communication or MTC. M2M and/or MTC may refer to data communication technologies that allow devices to communicate with one another or a base station without human intervention. For example, M2M and/or MTC may refer to communications from devices that integrate sensors or meters to measure or capture information and relay that information to a central server or application program that can make use of the information or present the information to humans interacting with the program or application.
MTC devices may be used to collect information or enable automated behavior of machines. Examples of applications for MTC devices include smart metering, inventory monitoring, water level monitoring, equipment monitoring, healthcare monitoring, wildlife monitoring, weather and geological event monitoring, fleet management and tracking, remote security sensing, physical access control, and transaction-based business charging.
In some wireless communications systems employing MTC, various coverage enhancement techniques may be employed to enhance the likelihood of successful transmissions for MTC devices with relatively poor coverage for network communications. Such coverage enhancement techniques may provide higher transmission power, redundant transmissions of data, or combinations thereof. Network nodes that use coverage enhancement techniques for transmissions thus have higher likelihood of successful transmissions than may be the case if the node were to transmit without coverage enhancement techniques. However, when a UE initially accesses a network, it may not be known which network nodes may use coverage enhancement techniques. Thus, a node having a lower received signal strength than another node may in fact provide better service due to coverage enhancement that a node with a higher received signal strength that does not use coverage enhancement.